Depends what you'd term "flat out", is it 100% of car's capacity? is that even possible? If not then isn't it more about as fast as possible with what's given to you? Think it was Kimi who said recently that even in the Bridgestone era you'd race up till 90% of the limits, rather than "flat out".

Difference was in this race Alonso was able to push somewhat faster as he and the team had the foresight to recognized that being constrained to the limits of the tyres' durability and driving to a delta was folly, that would only loose you more time over the long haul. If the tyres were in fact that bad then add another stop to the strategy, set faster lap times in comparison and not worry about nursing the car for the entire race, take a more aggressive approach, no one is forcing you to make 3 stops. Only reason they do it is because some super computer says its the best option and the team bosses when events diverge away from these "scientific facts" need a scapegoat to cover their arse, enter Pirelli tyres... Kimi could have won the race, Seb could have hounded Felipe for third, both chose the wrong strategy, in the case of Kimi a 3 stopper was in fact slower and in the case of Seb, RedBull had recognized the conundrum too late. In this sense it was refreshing to hear Stella mention that the decision to chnage tyres was more down to the feel of the driver than it was the calculations of a computer...

Pirelli should have approached the seasons the other way around - make proper race tyres that teams can predict and work with and then develop them to be more grippy but less durable (to a certain extent) through the season. At least then teams will know how to work the tyres, car performance will win out and the racing would probably get closer as the season progresses.

At the moment, there seems to be little design in victories - it's more to do with who can get their car in to a certain operating window for the tyres more than anything else.

That's probably the crux of the matter - the cars have been developed so much using CFD that with so much dependence on exhaust blowing, multi plane front wings, aero brake ducts etc they have been gradually reducing the operating window of each car - its just that some cars their window matches the tyre combination at a given circuit and some it doesn't.Take Force India - same tyre sets at Bahrain and Spain - DiResta does 2 stops in one race and 4 in the other. It's not really the tyres that have a problem but the design of the cars - they are just not flexible enough in their operating requirements.

That's an abhorrent statement. Hembery is basically saying that it doesn't matter who builds the best, fastest, most reliable car. Because Pirelli will make sure that they don't win.

Your definition is incomplete. "Best, fastest, most reliable car"... "for the given rules". This year rules use Pirelli 2013 tyres, which are the same for everyone. It's like Vettel saying "We are not going to the pace of the car, we are going to the pace of the tyre.". So what happened with the other teams doing better, have they a different tyre?So fun when things are not going their way

By the way, these are the pit stop numbers for 2011. They were not so whiny then, with the same amount of stops. I wonder why.

That's an abhorrent statement. Hembery is basically saying that it doesn't matter who builds the best, fastest, most reliable car. Because Pirelli will make sure that they don't win.

Blame Bernie. Its been said already a few hundred thousand times that the fia does not want to keep the regulations static to prevent one team dominating the calendar year. They want to level set the playing field and have engineers from every team scratching their heads from the beginning of the season..

Your definition is incomplete. "Best, fastest, most reliable car"... "for the given rules". This year rules use Pirelli 2013 tyres, which are the same for everyone. It's like Vettel saying "We are not going to the pace of the car, we are going to the pace of the tyre.". So what happened with the other teams doing better, have they a different tyre?So fun when things are not going their way

Blame Bernie. Its been said already a few hundred thousand times that the fia does not want to keep the regulations static to prevent one team dominating the calendar year. They want to level set the playing field and have engineers from every team scratching their heads from the beginning of the season..

That's an abhorrent statement. Hembery is basically saying that it doesn't matter who builds the best, fastest, most reliable car. Because Pirelli will make sure that they don't win.

So you're ok with Pirelli changing the tyres to suit a specific teams aerodynamic ability while at the same time punishing another's mechanical ability?

That doesn't sit well with me. Read the Domenicali article on Autosport about Ferrari working hard on one lap pace but not to the detriment of the cars ability on the tyres. This is what all teams should be doing. It's as simple as that for me.

oh boo hoo. RB makes too much DF. RB can't handle the tires. Pirelli wah wah wah. They're the same tires for everyone. You know before we were hearing about how briliant vettel was for visiting the pirelli factory and getting n edge in the tires over everyone. Then we hear about how he is dominating webber because he knows how to get the best out of the car and tires. Now that RB isn't looking as formidable anymore, suddenly Horner, DM, and SV are all spitting the dummy. Spare me - they're still favorites for the championship. I'm pretty sure that anyone in the paddock would trade RB's problem (mega fast car, some tire deg problems) with the opposite (normal car, good deg).

oh boo hoo. RB makes too much DF. RB can't handle the tires. Pirelli wah wah wah. They're the same tires for everyone. You know before we were hearing about how briliant vettel was for visiting the pirelli factory and getting n edge in the tires over everyone. Then we hear about how he is dominating webber because he knows how to get the best out of the car and tires. Now that RB isn't looking as formidable anymore, suddenly Horner, DM, and SV are all spitting the dummy. Spare me - they're still favorites for the championship. I'm pretty sure that anyone in the paddock would trade RB's problem (mega fast car, some tire deg problems) with the opposite (normal car, good deg).

By the way, these are the pit stop numbers for 2011. They were not so whiny then, with the same amount of stops. I wonder why.

Because it's not about the number of stops at all. Though Pirelli would like to frame it that way. There are many ways to build tyres that require the same number of stops at a specific track and given ambient conditions.

Umm. He doesn't seem to realize that things can be judged on principle, without having to look at outcomes. Why is a component supplier discussing outcomes. What in the world is going on here.

Is the fact that Red Bull would benefit the right reason to not change the tyres? There may be legit reasons to not make changes to the tyres, but this isn't one of them. Thats a kindergarten level argument from PH and designed to sway emotions, not a well-thought-out and rational explanation for avoiding an action.

Sport should not be about entertainment in my book. It should be about who is the best in the business they are in. When you mess around to stop the best being the best or to mess orders around just for TV it's no longer a sport.
F1 is more like a controlled TV show these days. All because fans complained about pole to flag wins.

I don't see Man U being forced to field crap players in order to make the show better.

I have read Brundle's comments on the matter today, and for once even people who work in the F1 media are speaking out. Normally they are to afraid to do so.

Exactly. Not changing the rules of the game once it has started has to be the most important one.

Indeed. That would be a very legitimate argument. Unfortunately they've already changed the hard tyres once, and evidently are planning on changing the tyres to prevent the visually spectacular delaminations, so that reason is going to ring a little hollow at this point. But yes, broadly that's the kind of argument he should be making.

Sport should not be about entertainment in my book. It should be about who is the best in the business they are in. When you mess around to stop the best being the best or to mess orders around just for TV it's no longer a sport.F1 is more like a controlled TV show these days. All because fans complained about pole to flag wins.

I don't see Man U being forced to field crap players in order to make the show better.

I have read Brundle's comments on the matter today, and for once even people who work in the F1 media are speaking out. Normally they are to afraid to do so.

Uh, every race this season has been won by WDC's. Top 4 in the WDC standings, as of now, are former (and current) WDC's. Looks to me that the best still are...uh... the best.

That, e.g., Lewis might not fight for the WDC all the way this year has nothing to do with his abilities, but with the inherent problems that has plagued Merc for years now.

Depends what you'd term "flat out", is it 100% of car's capacity? is that even possible? If not then isn't it more about as fast as possible with what's given to you? Think it was Kimi who said recently that even in the Bridgestone era you'd race up till 90% of the limits, rather than "flat out".

Even 90% is much more than today.

In addition the 'not pushing' in the past was often due to reliability issues. The cars nowadays are so reliable you rarely have to nurse the engine, or gearbox etc.

Sport should not be about entertainment in my book. It should be about who is the best in the business they are in. When you mess around to stop the best being the best or to mess orders around just for TV it's no longer a sport.F1 is more like a controlled TV show these days. All because fans complained about pole to flag wins.

I don't see Man U being forced to field crap players in order to make the show better.

I have read Brundle's comments on the matter today, and for once even people who work in the F1 media are speaking out. Normally they are to afraid to do so.

Brundle would be better served addressing the problems facing the formula as whole instead of pointing fingers at Pirelli.

Of course Red Bull is going to complain when the championship isn't a cake walk for them (which they're too used to at this point, Ferrari would whine much the same after their dominance began to wane), but what Mateschitz said is still true. It didn't look like a single driver pushed yesterday.

Brundle and Croft were also expressing quite a bit of discontent over what F1 has become during the race. I don't remember exactly what they had said other than Brundle pointing out at the end of the race that 80-something pit stops (!!!) is too many, but they certainly weren't being kind about what Pirelli's rubber has done.

When you even have television commentators saying on live TV that the sport is suffering, that's not good for the management. I hope they open their eyes and make Pirelli dial back their efforts to give viewers "a good show" and such. FIA, Pirelli, know what makes a good show? Drivers unable to push their cars out of fear of destroying their tyres? No, that's not it. How about drivers who CAN push to the limit and CAN race each other? Can we have that back, please?

So they no longer tell them to turn the engine down/short shift etc to get to the end of the race/save engine for next week.

They do that as well of course. The point i'm making it that Kimi is right in saying they don't push all the time, now, or before, but it was much more under driver control in the past in that the fastest way to drive was to drive as fast as the machinery could allow (within limits), even if you couldn't do it all the time.

The only pain to driving at the total limit was risking busting the engine (or gearbox etc), but if it didn't then there was no downside to it. Now, there is always a downside to driving to fast, no matter what you do.